_Journalist_. Forman maintains a "telegraphic news bureau" and secures
publication in various newspapers or periodicals of matter sent him for
dissemination by the Mutual Life, and he is paid $1.00 per line of the
policy-holders' money on all matter for which he obtains publicity. The
whitewash paragraphs recently published throughout the country in regard to
President McCurdy and the Mutual Life were all paid for on this basis.

II

THE ENEMIES I HAVE MADE

When a man discovers that a public building full of men, women, and
children is infested with rats and that these vicious rodents have
undermined its foundations and honeycombed its structure, it becomes his
duty, first, to warn the occupants of the presence of the rats, next, to
show them the damage that has been wrought and how the rats can be
trapped and killed--and then he may take a hand in the rat-hunt himself.

That is about what I have been doing, and if proof were needed that the
"System" suffered under my exposure of its villainies, I should have it
in plenty in the showers of mud bullets it has fired at me. From scores
of quarters these volleys came. A regular army of the "System's"
votaries must have been out working like Trojans to stop my work, to
discredit me, to bespatter me with its dirt.

The manner in which the "System" writhed under my attacks showed how
seriously it was hurt. What surprises me was that so little intelligence
was exhibited in defaming me. Such wanton, foolish attacks those that
were made on me personally! As though it mattered who or what I am in
comparison with the accusations I have made. Americans are not fools. To
say that Lawson is this or that does not minimize or detract from his
charge of robbery and conspiracy.

Every morning after I began to write "Frenzied Finance" I found a new
budget of personalities in my mail, in the newspapers, in pamphlets.
Learned lawyers traveled about the country slinging mud at me at
banquets and society gatherings; scores of hireling weekly and monthly
papers devoted pages to vilifying me; the insurance press was laden
with assaults, and for fear the public should miss the brickbats, the
insurance companies carefully mailed them to their policy-holders. All
these tirades were in one key--that of crude abuse. The statements about
myself and my career were nothing but lies. They were not even cleverly
imagined.

Upon entering on this crusade against "Frenzied Finance" I expecte